what you need to change inside
by violent darlings
Summary: The ninety day delinquent and the night surgeon; his bloody hands are a perfect match for her artificial anatomy. Enjoy.


Repo / Phantom crossover. should probably be in crossovers except, well, nah. I suppose I'd better explain what Repo is.

Repo! The Genetic Opera is a dystopian gothic rock opera set in a near future where, after an epidemic of organ failure, a company known as GeneCo came up with a way to transplant any organ into any body - for a fee, of course. Failure to pay would result in the 'ninety day delinquent' being hunted down by a Repo Man who repossesses the organs in the most grisly and bloody way possible. the surgeries were made possible by an anaesthetic drug known as zydrate, created in labs, but was also available in street form harvested from the brains of corpses. people addicted to altering their physical appearance are known as a scalpel sluts or addicted to the knife, and are also often addicted to zydrate to bear the pain of having their bodies ripped open and replaced every week or so. If you want to know more, go watch it, it's fantastic.

*Blind Mag; opera star. Nathan Wallace; head Repo man.

Disclaimer: I don't own nothing at all.

* * *

><p><em><strong>what you need to change inside<strong>_

he gets the job at two-thirty on a Wednesday afternoon, the data file sent to his phone, detailing her surgeries, her habits, and above all her name. Christine Daae. a pretty name, he thinks. she's a singer in one of the downtown clubs, a beauty, a girl who's had so many new pieces tacked onto her he imagines she probably can't remember the ones she started with. _oh my God,_ he breathes in shock, in horror, in hilarity. she has a fake heart, lungs and liver; pancreas, kneecaps, and ears; smile, eyes, and... reproductive system? he half wants to vomit; in twelve years of Repo this is by far the worst case of addiction to the knife that he's ever seen, and he would know.

he got into Repo a few years out of college, when he discovered not caring about the vast majority of the human race was not exactly an ideal trait for a would-be doctor. Repo recruited him and a week later he was cutting out body parts like he'd been doing it all his life. he didn't mind the blood or the gore or the death; he liked it, really, liked the power and the grime and the primal filth of what he was doing. he was a monster now. he was finally living up to the reputation his hideous face had granted him. it felt right. after all, it's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it.

it felt insanely, perfectly, monstrously right. it also felt wrong, too, but for the most part he tried to ignore that. no good ever came of it. so he tracks Miss Daae to her afternoon haunt, before she went off to sing for after business businessmen and z addicts coked up to their eyeballs on street shit. a downtown club, Against Your Anatomy, sleazy and dirty, haunted by zydrate addicts like living corpses.

she hits him like a semi trailer. staring at the pretty girl in the cafe, infrequent sunshine gilding her unnaturally white skin, his heart felt like it was about to clatter out of his chest. she is a masterpiece of modern science, a creature ripped apart and put back together to be more beautiful and tragic than before - but so fragile, oh, so very delicate. he wanted her like a hole in the head.

he couldn't wait to get her soft, giving body against his - perhaps he would straddle her as he slit her from collarbone to pelvis and set to work - and do the job. touch a woman in the only way a monster like him was allowed to these days. no gentle caresses or touches of the cheek for him - at least, not until they were dead and their organs were safely packed away. but that felt too much like necrophilia for his liking, and he is a man, after all. he has his pride.

when she leaves the cafe in the dimming light he knocks her over the head and takes her home. his house is perfectly normal save for the lab underneath it. a lot of Repos have it set up that way, he's learned. death down below and the family up above, the way of life of the legal assassin. Erik is no different. except he has no family. just him.

he doesn't bother tying her up. she's a tiny little girl and one jab of the blade through her will kill her. he sets her down on the tiled floor instead, slipping into a plastic suit to block as much of the blood as possible. he stares down at her a moment. she's so beautiful. it shines through the bits and pieces cut off from her or tacked on, and for a moment he imagines her in his bed, set against his sheets. her soul glitters up at him.

of course, Christine chooses that exact moment of weakness to wake up. _hi,_ she says, staring up at him with a mixture of amusement and concern, but not for herself. _you all right up there?_ he realises she's stoned off of her head on z. that makes it easier, but it makes it harder too.

_I'm fine_, he says brusquely. _I'm used to this._

_fire away,_ _then_, she says languorously, settling back as he rips her shirt down the middle, slits her bra. _I'll just wait._

he avoids her eyes as he studies her torso, professional enough to not stare at her breasts but not so disassociated to not notice the effect the cold air has on them. the scars are barely visible, pale lines of silvery white under her skin, and she nearly shines. a moonshine graft, maybe.

but he can't find the best way to approach it, the best way around her old surgery scars. there are so many delicate lines of scar tissue and he can't penetrate through without nicking one of the precious organs he's being paid to retrieve. and that's not the only thing that makes this job unusual compared to the rest. she should be screaming, wailing and thrashing, but instead she stares up at the ceiling peacefully, dark eyes serene. try the liver first, she says helpfully, but the scars from where she's had her waist tightened and ribs replaced track over the area and he can't get the blade in.

he rocks back on his heels in frustration.

_having a bit of trouble there?_ she inquires, and he frowns deeper.

_yes,_ he growls. _you've too many damn scars. _

she huffs out a weak laugh. _so I've been told_, she replies, and her hand reaches for him. he dimly remembers that although her fingers have been replaced, the palms are real. one of those same palms rest against the cheek of his mask. he nuzzles into it unconsciously. no one touches him like this. no one ever lives long enough.

_poor thing,_ she says softly. _poor, poor man._ it sparks heat in his veins.

_why are you pitying me? I'm going to kill you,_ he shouts, and she just smiles.

_I know,_ she replies, sitting up to better press her tiny hands against his masked face_. that's why I pity you._ he turns his face unwillingly into her hands, and catches sight of a surgery scar on her wrist. anger overtakes him and violently he pulls himself out of her reach.

_is anything about you fucking real anymore?_ he screams, beyond the point of breaking, snapped and shivering in the dark. Christine does not break in the face of his rage.

_my voice,_ she replies, her head high, the thunder of her artificial heart in his ears. and she sings, a crystal-cold knife-hot symphony of sweetness, and he nearly falls to his knees. he hasn't heard music like that since before he started as a Repo. more to the point, nothing has touched him so profoundly, broken through the cocoon of coldness and bloodshed he had willingly surrounded himself with. he's on his knees in a chamber of death, beside a girl more plastic than person, and oh, he feels alive, for the first time in years. in decades. since he first grasped the scalpel in his hands and took it to the ninety day delinquent splayed out for the cutting. he doesn't feel like Erik, the night surgeon any more. he just feels like Erik.

long after she finished her song he kneels there, feeling the weight of her eyes on him and the tiles pressing painfully onto his knees. none of it matters. not as long as that voice stays.

_as long as you sing I won't kill you_, he rasps out eventually, shame and despair and oh, entreaty roughening his whisper. her voice makes him remember what is was like to be human, to be real. it puts him back together in the same way he once did others, when the only blood that stained his hands could be easily washed off at the end of a day's work. not so easy now.

he is brought to the present by her hand on his arm. _all right,_ she says. as you wish it. _I mean, I'm not Blind Mag or anything, but I'll sing for you._

and so they coexist together, the monster and the mannequin. he is a distorted freak of nature and she is patched together with false skin, and although he knows she notices the mask she doesn't comment on it. he sees the faint, almost invisible lines on her skin where she has been grafted together; her surgeons are good, but not the best. he could have done it better.

he's one of the best, not quite the best because Wallace is a man possessed, but he's up there. his fail rate is low, his incisions are clean, and he isn't encumbered by all those pesky little emotions that come with sawing into people's bodies and hacking them apart. except now he is. all those faceless and voiceless victims cannot compare to Christine fucking Daae of the golden voice and the silver skin, exquisite and totally his, down here in the dark.

the first morning she wakes and eats breakfast with him as though it's the most ordinary thing in the world. he goes out to work and she stays at home, and he can't pretend deep in his heart it's not what he's always wanted. but it's all a sham, a lie, and the knife twists deep in his gut when he remembers locking her in the house, a prisoner, left to amuse herself in a house of death.

and so the next day he doesn't bother going out and stays with her. it doesn't matter anyway, because he'd have been staying regardless. she's going into zydrate withdrawal, and although he has a whole cabinet full of the stuff, lab quality, he doesn't give her any. he watches her sweat and shriek and cry and he strokes the damp hair back from her little face, cooing Christine, Christine, singing to her in every language he's ever known. and eventually she calms. it is near a week before she is well enough to resemble her old self again.

Christine when not addled by zydrate is a gunshot of a girl, a hard-faced product of the streets. she talks of her past like it was only yesterday but eventually, as he gets to know her further, her walls come down and she tells him everything. he half wishes she hadn't. he didn't know things like that still existed in this modern world. and gradually he begins to tell her of himself, how he had failed as a doctor and become Repo. and when he has talked himself into silence she stretches, clean and pink from her shower, and pulls him into her bed.

and oh, that he didn't expect. he tries to pull away but she kisses him through the mask and he submits, flipping off the light to put them in complete darkness and puts his mangled face against hers without the mask, his killer's hands on her skin. neither of them are completely right, without flaw. he doesn't allow himself to admire how they match.

_this your first time?_ she asks in her goddess' voice. he nods against her shoulder, feels his face flush and her hands creep his shirt up, loosen his belt. _I'll be gentle,_ she promises, and the novelty of someone saying that takes his breath away. no one is gentle with him. not ugly, maimed, monster Erik. but she tangles her legs around his waist and he nearly sobs into her hair as he sinks into the sweet blissful warmth of her, and she strokes his hair and kisses his forehead and murmurs encouragement. she keeps her word.

and so it goes.

out of the bed she is less kind, more prone to mercurial moods and challenging him. the differences would bemuse him but for the way he notices in her his own behaviours. and he understands that this is what life has done to her. as he can only bear to be human in the darkness, so can she. they just have different ways of coping in the day, he with murder, and she with sarcasm. she bites and nips and he grows to adore it in an embarrassingly short time, the dichotomy of her, loving what sometime feels like two separate women trapped in one ragged body.

_what do you look like without the mask_? Christine asks abruptly one day, and when he attempts to rise away from her she snatches it off anyway. he screams at her and she sits through it, examining his ruined face without emotion before, when his ire has ran out of steam, she asks, _ever think of getting that fixed?_

the thought of surgery makes him feel even more ill than the thought of looking as he did for the rest of his life. _I'd rather die,_ he tells her, imagining defaulting on his payments and having a Repo man come and rip his face off. a ruined face is better than no face at all. but something about his statement stirs her eyes to flare into wakefulness and she nearly topples him over as she pounces, kissing his hideous face and winding her legs around his waist. and he takes her right there on the kitchen table, his hands too tight on her hips, her waist, any part of her he can hold onto against the storm. it is the first time he makes love to her in the light.

_you're real,_ she gasps against his shoulder, her teeth nipping at the pulse. _you're so real._

and that's the part that bemuses him, that drives him mad and drives him undone in the same breath. she feels fake. she feels real. she feels like nothing else on the planet. she touches him with fingers too long and slender to be anatomically hers and he feels like he is the one disjointed at the seams, that the touch of her skin on his will tear him apart.

but for all her breasts are fake, her nipples are real. the eyes staring up at him are plucked from a dead girl's eye sockets but oh, the voice moaning and begging in his ear is hers, is natural. she is a maddening mix of the two, just real enough to imitate a live thing for all she is parcelled up in the dead. it makes his head spin.

and when she sings and soars above him, he collapses onto the sofa and just listens. sometimes he accompanies her but mostly he sinks into the numbness that her voice creates in him. no, not numbness, but the absence of agony, and her voice sweeps over the old wounds like rain in the desert, a flood of mercy and kindness and absolution. her voice is his salvation.

they fight, only once, because their time together is short enough that Erik cannot conceive of arguing with her when he could be kissing her, or singing with her, or simply lying with her in his arms, her head on his chest. but they are both hot-tempered individuals, and it is inevitable that they disagree eventually. she has her period and it amuses him, that her artificial body can still perform one of its most basic vital functions. but it makes her cranky and she snaps at the remark in a way she might not have if not, and he is foolish enough to comment on it. he offers the bait, she takes it, and before he knows what's going on she is throwing a dinner plate at his head, that enchanting voice cracking and hissing with fury.

Christine's words bite like tiny piranhas nipping at his feet, but he is Repo, after all, a hard man, one who does not take a fight lying down. and so he gives as good as he gets, criticising her lifestyle, the reasoning behind her obsession with cutting herself up. he tries to remain calm, but when the phrase 'forty year old virgin' gets aired, he loses whatever shred of self control he had remaining and launches into a vitriolic summary of her parts, vicious enough that she storms away leaving him shouting to an empty room. he is angry and heartbroken and he thinks he has ruined everything.

she slips into his bed later, snuggling her warm body around his icy frame. he remains rigid and unbending until she presses her lips to his ear, murmuring her apology like a prayer, and then of course all he can do is wind his arms around her, feeling her curves fit around him like the other half of the puzzle eluding him all of his life.

_the cancer took most of it,_ she murmurs into the dark_. some of it was for vanity, but mostly because of the cancer. I kept replacing things in the hope that would fix it, but now it's in my blood, my brain, and my bones. I can't run from it anymore. I'm going to die._

_oh, Christine,_ he rasps. _my Christine._

_yours_, she agrees, and turns her face up to his kiss.

it is an idyllic way of life, making love and making breakfast and making memories together. he falls in love with her a little more each day, until the thought of life before her sends him reeling. but it cannot last forever. he is a GeneCO employee and she wears GeneCO products on and beneath her skin, and GeneCO hold tight to what they own. they cannot remain unnoticed forever. he is one of the best, after all, and Christine with her multiple overdue parts is like a golden goose for Repo Men. the commissions off of her alone would be more than enough to send someone to holiday in the Caribbean for a month, or some other place where the sun still shone. Erik tries to put such thoughts to the back of his mind, but he cannot, not forever. not when they catch up with him.

the message comes from Wallace, tired, kind eyed Nathan when he's out in the street one day, shopping, of all things. Wallace out of his Repo suit is still an imposing man, and it's been three weeks since he showed up for work, since he took Christine home, and he knows what is coming. he also knows Nathan is not here on official business, but rather to warn him_. they're going to kill you if you don't do the job, Erik. remember who you are,_ Wallace says, vanishing into the crowd. for a big man, he can blend in easily, and a sliver of ice falls down Erik's spine. he's known this for a long time, that no one crosses GeneCO, not even Repo.

he has to tell her, but he waits two days, stretching them out in glorious colour, fixing them in his memory even as he contemplates telling Christine that it's time for him to rip her apart. it shouldn't be so hard. they were a doomed love affair from start to finish, but somehow his heart had run away without him and fallen in love with her. and now he has to kill her. he nearly vomits, but to her credit, when he tells her she manages to keep her cool, even if her eyes go so wide it's like they're about to swallow him whole. he coughs around the lump in his throat and waits for her to process the news_. it was bound to happen eventually,_ she finally says, _and anyway, it's getting harder for me to pretend I'm not being eaten alive by the pain. might as well do it now._

and so they do. he straps her to the board and spreads her like a pink, ragged starfish to be dissected. she waits patiently through it and doesn't complain when halfway through, one hand still free, he collapses to his knees and weeps, burying his face in her naked stomach, her faintly plastic skin. she cards her hand through his hair and waits for his to finish weeping, to replace his mask and turn to his scalpels. what perfection, what precision.

she doesn't let him give her any zydrate. he doesn't usually, the claims medic gives no anaesthetic, but she is different. so different_. I want to be here_, she says_. I want to feel your hands on me._ and damn if that doesn't set him to weeping once more. _oh, Erik,_ she sighs. _my Erik._

he mimics her reply from before - it feels like years, but was only days. _yours_, he rasps, and then, _yes, of course, Christine, no one else's. always yours._ and she sighs like the weight of the world has been taken from her.

_start with the heart,_ she murmurs, her eyes boring into his. he wonders what colour they were originally - now they are chocolate brown irises, wide-blown pupils.

_the heart?_ he asks, mesmerised by her dark eyes, her fathomless gaze. she is bound and open and naked before him, but all he can think of is her soul in her eyes, begging him, encouraging him.

_yes, my heart. after all, it is yours_, she says, a little humour in her voice, but he hears the shaking and the goose bumps on her skin from the cool air and the fear. he's proud of her and disappointed in her; he loves her and hates her, and the way she has taught him to see between inky black and snow white into the murky grey between.

_GeneCO's_, he corrects, attempting to smile from beneath the mask, but she shakes her head.

_no, Erik, yours._ and maybe it is, and he'll give it back to GeneCO tonight, but for now, at least, she is his. as he is hers.

she stretches, manages to pull herself an inch or two away from the board, and brushes his lips against hers._ I'm giving your permission_, she breathes, and as she murmurs _I love you_ in his ear he eases the blade into the soft skin of her throat, cutting her throat, severing her spinal cord and killing her instantly. she bleeds and bleeds and like it matters, because he shoved the knife through her voice and now that's gone too. and his mask is bloody and his hands are bloody and her heart beats longer than he thought possible, forcing the sticky crimson out of her body until finally it slows to a trickle, and then an ooze. and then nothing at all.

he stares down at her for a long time, her splayed limbs, her artificial skin. the body he'd worshipped that had once been someone else's, grafted to her fragile frame with zydrate and ragged stitches.

it's not really her anymore. maybe it never was.

and he begins to cut.


End file.
